The customary way of erecting a retaining wall and securing face panels to the wall is to successively place the panels at the face of the earthen formation and backfill behind the panels as the wall is erected. An erection technique of this type may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,929,125 by William K. Hilfiker, one of the co-inventors herein. With this type of construction, connection of the face panels to the soil reinforcing elements takes place before the elements are embedded and, as a result, precise alignment of the soil reinforcing elements with connectors on the panels is possible. The disadvantage of this technique, however, is that substantial settling of the earthen formation can occur after the connections between the soil retaining elements and the face panels have been made. This can result in significant strain on the connections.
The prior art also teaches flexible or slidable connections between face panels and anchors elements embedded within a formation to permit settling of the formation without straining the connection between the panels and the embedded elements. One such technique is found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,343,572 to William K. Hilfiker wherein the deformable sections are incorporated into the anchor elements adjacent the face member to permit the anchor elements to controllably deform, while maintaining the face member in place. Other techniques are found in U.S. Pat. No. 1,762,343 to Munster, U.S. Pat. No. 4,407,611 to Murray et al. and U.K. patent application 2,014,222 to Brown et al. The latter patents and application provide means to enable embedded anchors to slide vertically relative to face panels to accommodate settlement of the earthen formation behind the panels.